112th Congress: The worst ever?

The legislative branch has become so easy to caricature and pillory that Obama has been running against Congress rather than his Republican rivals for the presidency — often without making distinctions between members of his own Democratic Party and the GOP.

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So when he takes the podium to deliver the final State of the Union address of his first term on Jan. 24, Obama will position himself, literally and figuratively, as the man standing up to the most unpopular Congress in the history of polling — an institution so reviled that its own members don’t take the political risk of defending it.

Like a staggering boxer who can’t find his own corner, the black-and-blue 112th Congress seems likely to stumble into more Obama haymakers, like it did on the payroll tax cut fight at the end of last year, and Obama will have a national audience if he wants to set them up for a knockout punch later this month. Obama, once unsure of his footing, now relishes the fight. His brazen recess appointments of a consumer watchdog and three labor board members show that he sees no political downside to sticking it to Congress. And for their part, Republicans aren’t interested in tangling with Obama for the next 10 months.

Never mind that the public elected a new House Republican majority to stop the Obama agenda. The trope of a “do nothing” Congress is red meat for Americans who seem to have a collective feeling that lawmakers can’t or won’t do anything to breathe life into the economy. It’s also a prophecy that seems almost certain to be fulfilled: With a debt-limit increase and the fiscal 2012 spending bills already in hand, the president doesn’t need anything from Congress — except the political spectacle of failing to act — before Election Day in November.

Moreover, there’s little incentive for most members of Congress to try to resurrect the standing of the institution with a legislative spurt. Freshman House Republicans, who ran against the Washington establishment, won’t suddenly become champions of government. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who at times has appeared to show more allegiance to Obama than members of his own caucus, won’t find reason to work with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to slash government any further. And the electoral strategy of minority leaders Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) relies on voter frustration with incumbent members of the Senate Democratic majority and the House Republican majority.

The bottom line: Congress is a big, fat, motionless piñata, and everyone in Washington is standing in line with a stick.

First up, Obama.

“For all of the difficulties the president faces, he is still substantially more popular than Congress, so I think we can expect him to exploit that in the State of the Union and in the election,” said Jeff Shesol, a speechwriter in the Clinton White House and a partner at West Wing Writers. “You are very likely to see a combative president challenging Congress, reminding them of the unfinished business of this session and separating himself from this messy, awful, unproductive process in Washington.”

In late October, amid battles over the budget and extending the president’s payroll tax cut, Congress bottomed out at a 9 percent approval rating, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll. Just before Christmas, Gallup pegged the figure at 11 percent, the lowest level since that organization began asking the approval question in 1974.

Surely, there’s nothing new about public scorn of the legislative body and its function.